I have tried pretty much all the various Paladin builds and have found this to be the most effective. The elemental auras just didn't cut it for me and I prefer zeal vs single attacks.

There are a number of good reasons to use this build. First, I was not forced to use any of my +1 skill jewels or forgings since I use all Paladin skills except for shock armor. That saves resources. I also was able to use a few of my uniques that I had lying around like the shield, boots, gloves & belt. I only had to re-roll the uniques a couple of times to get good enough mods. I had some excellent rare jewelry ready to go and had an interesting weapon (not uberific, but good and as of now I have not used any maples yet on it). Thus, I had the build ready to go and could use my armor I had been building forever on it.

About two years ago I decided after reading the forums and thinking about how I like to play the game I decided that maples would be best spent on an Eternal Reign that I can pass to my various melee characters if needed. I play quite a bit, do a lot of jewelry gambling, kill uber Diablo on p7 with my strafer super easy. I have literally hundreds of SA's since I am a pack rat and runes drop like crazy. Anyway, I read that you could dstone before applying the runeword, so I hacked away at it over time - first with the Defense, then resists, then hit recovery, and then %life. I should have done DR% also but I got impatient and wanted to get this done. I had a 91 Pally that was an old character so I didnt have to level another one.

For a Merc, I tried my geared cold rogue first but it was taking too much attention and I really didn't need the freezing. I settled on a defensive Barb which is a good choice for the Battle Orders and stuns. He is very stout and helps a bit with killing.

The weapon isn't duel max but I think the might on equip makes up for it. Note the dstoning of the armor before I put on the runeword.

Excellent rare helm and 3 uniques (good to use them!) I had never used the belt before in any build, but the more I thought about it the better it sounded. The belt helps to reach a fast block breakpoint and the additional blocking frees up some Dex points. The rest of the stats are good enough since belts are a weak spot as far as uniques go.

I generally use magic 0skill gloves for melee characters, but since the (fanat) 0skill is capped at 3 on a Pally the unique makes good sense.

As mentioned in the comments, Amp is a must and it is difficult to get a rare that can compete with the set amulet. You can see I have Dstone room on the rings, and I'll be adding life and also getting deadly strike rating up to 100%.

I have a bunch of runeword shields that I thought about using but this is a winner. I would have used the LOD version if I needed resists.

Lastly, I have all the unique charms forged with +Pally. No re-rolling on the charms or sockets yet. I have 9 nice rare grand charm skillers.

I agree, VERY nice items. The stoning (and recipe 50-ing) of your torso alone requires more than 5 times the amount of d-stones in all my equipment combined and I'm only 2 levels behind you. Also, I prefer Leoric's armor for amp damage and max resists, which frees up the amulet slot. -- Mmew?08-25-2010 (Wed) 06:44:03

Band of War is a very good amulet if you decide on using a good pair of gloves, because of the Amplify Damage You have one exceptional character here; my work has been cut out for my next pally it seems -- psycho2?07-15-2010 (Thu) 11:35:16